The Latest

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Sampling: The premiere of Sons of Tucson made it look like yet another Fox live-action comedy flop; it pulled a mere 2.1 demo. That's bad, and made even worse by the fact that it led out of an original Family Guy's 3.5 demo. If that's not dead on arrival, it's close.

Retention: In week 2, there was merely a 10% drop, which is an above-average performance. But it doesn't make up for how bad the premiere was. And with an original Family Guy providing a strong lead-in, it would be tough to expect the retention to get all that much worse; losing 40% of that demo in one half-hour is already anemic.

Prognosis: The prognosis is not good. This is another case where the bad premiere overrides the above-average retention, and that'll be something to consider when I evaluate my system of prognosticating based on two weeks. Sons may make its way up to "borderline" using my system (and in fact, it'd already be there if I rounded to tenths of a percent for retention), but it's worse than borderline. Starting with a 2.1 in that half-hour is a situation where, barring a week 2 miracle, the prognosis can be made in the First One Week. Look for this to be another one-and-done Fox live-action comedy.

Shows already renewed for 2010-11 are greened, shows already axed are redded, the new show this entry is in blue. If this is your first of these First Two Weeks post, click the "new shows" label and head down to the bottom for more on the method behind this madness.

Those three shows have all returned with original #13 in the last two nights.

Gossip Girl: 2.0 W18-34, 26% off its fall average, 20% off its last original (2.5)90210: 1.3 W18-34, 43% off its fall average, 24% off its last original (1.7)Melrose Place: 0.7 W18-34, 53% off its fall average, 30% off its last original (1.0)

Listen, I know that when you start earlier in the season, that makes the season longer, and so there are more weeks when you can't air originals. But 90210/Melrose went from December 8 to March 9 with zero originals. That is almost as long as the summer hiatus. Should serialized shows really go dark for that long in the middle of a TV season? These results don't bode well for the philosophy.

Sampling: The premiere of Parenthood was somewhat widely considered a disappointment due to the Olympics promotion. Still, at a 3.1 demo, it trails the Southland premiere (which had its own promotional advantage, with significant promotion during the widely-viewed ER finale as that show's spiritual successor) by just a tick and is slightly ahead of the My Own Worst Enemy premiere from fall of '08, which had a much larger lead-in. The Biggest Loser pulled just a 3.2 demo, so the lead-in retention was sound. And it's significantly ahead of this season's only two other NBC drama premieres, Trauma and Mercy. It is a pretty inconclusive start.

Retention: A week later, with lead-in The Biggest Loser down two ticks from 3.2 to 3.0, Parenthood drops five ticks from 3.1 to 2.6. This is a 16% drop, something that Marc at PIFeedback called a very typical drop, and looking at the list of week two retentions below, that's the truth. Right smack in the middle of all shows.

Prognosis: "Borderline" is the system's diagnosis, and that sounds just about right. A lackluster but far from awful premiere, and a lackluster but far from awful week 2 make it a highly average - and thus hard to predict - situation. It's not easy, but I'm saying it gets a season 2. It's on NBC, where the standards are lower to begin with, and the net is going to have to fill a lot of real estate in the fall with Leno gone. And the critics for the most part don't completely hate it. For an NBC show, those modest achievements are often enough. As a bigger-picture ratings person, I'd say this one needs more data, but within the bounds of this system, I'm leaning renewal.

Shows already renewed for 2010-11 are greened, shows already axed are redded, the new show this entry is in blue. If this is your first of these First Two Weeks post, click the "new shows" label and head down to the bottom for more on the method behind this madness.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Fell behind again, but this should get us through this month of useless comparisons. These posts will return in May and, suffice to say, be considerably more useful! I'm putting 'em all in one post so that Twitterfeed won't fail to show all but the first.

Upcoming on the blarg: definitely a look at Parenthood's first two weeks, and if I'm feeling super ambitious I may look back through all my Feb sweeps posts and try to glean a few lessons out of this madness. No inspiration for one of my in-depth TV ratings studies of late, but that could strike at any time!

There was a presidential news conference on 3/24/09, so the 8pm hour is omitted for all but the CW. I'm leaving out Fox altogether, since I don't have a breakdown on American Idol that would allow me to compare its 9:00 hour to the lowly House repeat last year... and that's a pretty meaningless comparison anyway.

Well, I've let myself get about a week behind on this... sorry to those who have spent that time on the edge of your seat! This is probably the only post that will show up on the Twitter feed, but if you're clicking here from that, I'll be posting four more of these within a little while, so if you're interested in a particular year to year comparison, give me an hour tops and check back.

60 Minutes -50% (year-ago telecast started closer to 8:00 and had the NCAA tourney as a lead-in)The Amazing Race -19%(Undercover Boss vs. Cold Case) +100%(The Unit vs. Cold Case) +9%Cold Case (10pm vs. 9pm) +4% (but again, due to the late start time last year, these airings actually aired at about the same time)

('Til Death 7pm vs. American Dad (R)) +63%('Til Death 7:30pm vs. King of the Hill (R)) +9%The Simpsons -3%(The Cleveland Show vs. King of the Hill) +8%(Family Guy (R) vs. Family Guy) -14%American Dad -3%